Why wouldn’t you want a Maine stone for your engagement ring?
Winterguide 2020
By Colin S. Sargent
©MMGM/J.Scovil
Maybe the Pine Tree State should have been the Gemstone State.
Maine can claim the first commercial gemstone mine in the United States, discovered near Paris, Maine, in 1820. Within a year who but a thirteen-year-old Hannibal Hamlin, younger brother of discoverer Elijah Hamlin, was involved in searching for tourmaline and selling his finds for pocket money, long before he became Abraham Lincoln’s Vice President through most of the Civil War from 1861 to 1865.
Love Stones
“Prior to World War II, in Western countries, only ten percent of engagement rings contained a diamond.” —Social Science Research Network
“I chose a tourmaline engagement ring, and that was 45 years ago,’ says Portland jewelry designer Patricia Daunis. “I didn’t want a diamond. I wanted something distinctive.”
“Diamonds aren’t very rare. Maine tourmaline is special,” says Annette Evans, owner of RD Allen in Freeport. “It’s got an allure to it and comes in every hue in the book from clear to black, even silver. A lot of stores would rather sell the diamonds, so they say tourmaline is a soft stone. But most colored gemstones run from six to nine on the hardness scale. Tourmaline is a hard seven. And the scale doesn’t measure toughness. I see plenty of 30 to 40-year-old tourmaline rings that still look good.
“Customers propelled me into tourmaline engagement rings. And it’s perfect. Tourmaline is called the ‘love stone.’ It has piezoelectric properties, which attracts positive energy, and it’s also pyroelectric, so it’s warm to the touch.”
The average price per carat is $700 for New England tourmaline, $70 for New England amethyst, and $26,000 for diamond. This price is highest grade plain at 1-carat size, each cut and faceted.
Amethysts Are a Girl’s Best Friend
Amethyst is quartz encountered in the process of quarrying pegmatites, which are the areas of granite formations that cooled from magma long ago that have formed large crystals containing minerals such as quartzes (amethyst most valuably) and tourmalines.
Tourmaline and amethyst deposits were often uncovered by retreating glaciers during the last Ice Age. That’s why stones are found elsewhere in New England, such as the amethyst and rose quartzes found on the Isles of Shoals and tourmalines in Connecticut.
A way to select a stone to maximize value and personal authenticity would be to purchase one as close to the source as possible, or, in other words, as far down the rock-to-setting (as in ‘farm-to-table’) ladder as possible, to avoid many markups and modifications to the stone. This allows for the design to be suited to the preferences of the buyer, at usually a lower total cost.
Dennis Creaser of Creaser Jewelers from Tourmaline Ground Zero, in South Paris, walks us through the steps.
“Almost without exception, modern Maine gemstones are specifically looked for. They’re not a byproduct of commercial or industrial mining, but are sought after from miners who want to find them.”
“Maine has a special place in the gemstone history of the United States.
The first commercial gemstone mine was started in Maine.”–geology.com
Bloodless Diamonds
“They’re very small-scale operations, usually only one or two people. The good thing about this is that these days there is very, very little environmental impact.
“In the past, when feldspar mining in Maine was a thing, the quarries were immense, beyond the scale you could think a Maine mine could be. Today, the largest quarry producing gemstones is Mount Mica. Compared to other gemstone operations in the world, it’s very small. You can barely see it from satellite photos. Most large quarry operations can be seen from space.
“These one-or-two person operations in Maine usually buy the largest excavator they can afford. We mined for amethyst with a 5,500-pound excavator, which could be towed behind a heavy-duty pickup truck. We built our own dump truck out of a four-wheel-drive pickup truck that was no longer road-legal. With these two pieces of equipment, we were able to start our mine.
“The first step is finding the gemstones—indeed an ordeal. It’s like playing the slot machine. You have no idea when you’re going to win, or if.
“When you find a pocket, very little of the material is gemstone quality, maybe two or five percent. The rest is going to be non-gem-quality, maybe specimen grade material. Some miners can start to tell the difference, but the one who really can is a cutter. A person can be both a miner and a gem cutter, like myself, but that’s a little rare. Most miners work with a cutter. After they’ve made their selections, they take their pile of rough to the cutter, who sorts the rough stones and decides which ones are good.
“I have a factory I use in Sri Lanka. Out of the handful of rough, only 10 or 15 will be worthy of being cut in the United States. The smaller gem-quality material will be sent to Sri Lanka or Thailand. Stuff that doesn’t make that grade may be tumbled into beads, or whatever, but mostly it ends up in buckets and we try to figure out what to do with them.
“There are only a handful of jewelers left in Maine that deal with Maine gemstones. Primarily it’s us and Cross Jewelers. Direct contact with the mines is really what to look for. If you’re interested in buying Maine, you’re going to get the best value working with a jeweler directly connected to the mines.”
The Ultimate Maine Necklace
When Josephine Peary’s infant daughter died in 1901, she traveled across the arctic ice to see her husband, polar explorer Robert E. Peary. He’d never seen his child. There she met Allakasingwah, Peary’s Inuit lover who would have two sons with him. In 1913, the explorer gave Josephine this “I’m sorry” present for her fiftieth birthday. Designed by Carter Brothers Jewelers in downtown Portland, it features “10 deep green Maine tourmalines, totaling 47.5 carats, set in native gold,” according to the Maine State Museum. “Both of the Pearys were emphatic that ‘they would not be satisfied with anything but the deep, pure emerald green’ of Mount Apatite tourmaline,” according to A Story of Maine in 112 Objects: From Prehistory to Modern Times by Bernard P. Fishman.
Josephine and her husband arranged the stones on a table on their Eagle Island retreat and “spent evening after evening at the fascinating game of arranging and rearranging the sparkling green gems on a bit of white velvet, trying to decide upon the most effective design,” Fishman writes.
Years later in Washington, she hated when reporters called it her beautiful emerald necklace. According to Fishman, “She would say: ‘Other women have their emeralds and diamonds. I am the only one who has a Maine tourmaline necklace set in Maine-mined gold.’”
Fun fact: Bestselling author and explorer Josephine Peary summered on Eagle Island, but she had a winter apartment at Ricker Park on 290 Baxter Boulevard in Portland.
There wrong when they say theres only two jewelers in maine that sets tourmaline to jewelry. I know because im one .and have been doing it for over 30 years . No im not up there like cross jewelers , im only one jeweler that produces handmade maine tourmaline jewelry.most of my business is on face book. As i was born in maine ive been a collector of many of the minerals of maine , its sad to see there are less and less of mineral collectors and the mines to collect in are getting harder to get into . Like the dunton ,sold and the mine posted . There are many good mines in maine that have been closed. Tourmaline is the number one mineral to look for but there is many more minerals out there .